Alex wasn’t sure what had happened. There was something warm and soft in her arms and she knew it was Babbit Rabbit. Hellie had— She had picked him up. Where was she? It was too dark to see and she couldn’t quite make sense of her thoughts. She went to her knees and heaved once, twice. Nothing came up but a mouthful of bile. A dim memory surfaced of Dawes telling her to fast.
“It’s okay,” she whispered to Babbit Rabbit. But her arms were empty. He was gone.
He was never there, she told herself. Get your shit together.
But she’d felt him in her arms, warm and alive, his little body whole and safe as he was meant to be, as if she’d done her job and protected him from the start.
The ground felt soft beneath her hands, covered in damp, fallen leaves. She looked up and realized she was staring through the branches of a tree, many trees. She was in some kind of forest … no, an orchard, the branches black and glittering and heavily laden with fruit, its skin darkest purple. Where the peel had split, she saw red seeds that gleamed like jewels. Above, the sky was the plum of a bad bruise. She heard a soft humming and realized the trees were thick with golden bees tending to black hives high in the branches. I was Hellie. Hellie in death. Hellie at the plate. The misery of that night at Ground Zero clung to her like the smell of smoke. She’d never get free of it.
Alex glimpsed something moving through the rows of trees. She stumbled to her feet.
“Turner!” She regretted calling his name immediately. What if whatever was in the orchard only looked like Turner?
But a moment later, he, and then Dawes, and then Tripp emerged from the trees. No one looked quite like they should. Dawes wore parchment-colored robes, the cuffs stained with ink, and her red hair had been elaborately arranged in thick braids. Turner wore a cloak of gleaming black feathers that shimmered like the back of a beetle. Tripp was in armor, but the kind that looked like it had never seen battle, enamel white, an ermine cape fastened over his left shoulder with an emerald brooch the size of a peach pit. The scholar, the priest, and the prince. Alex held out her arms. She was wearing armor too, but it was forged steel, made for warfare. The armor of a soldier. It should have felt heavy, but she might as well have been wearing a T-shirt for all she felt the weight of it.
“Are we dead?” Tripp asked, his eyes so wide she could see a perfect white ring around his irises. “We have to be, right?”
He wasn’t quite looking at her; in fact, no one was. None of them were making eye contact. They’d fallen through each other’s lives, seen the crimes they’d committed, big and small.
No one should know another person that way, Alex thought. It’s too much.
“Where are we?” Turner asked. “What is this place?”
Dawes’s eyes were red, her mouth swollen from crying. She reached up to touch one of the branches, then thought better of it. “I don’t know. Some people think the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge was a pomegranate.”
Turner raised a brow. “That doesn’t look like any pomegranate I ever saw.”
“It looks pretty good,” said Tripp.
“Do not eat anything,” Dawes snapped.
Tripp scowled. “I’m not stupid.” Then his expression changed. He looked caught between wonder and fear. “Holy shit, Alex, you’re…”
Dawes bit deep into her lip and Turner’s grim mouth flattened even more.
“Alex,” whispered Dawes. “You’re … you’re on fire.”
Alex looked down. Blue flame had ignited over her body, a low, shifting blaze, like the forest floor in a controlled burn. She touched her fingers to it, saw it move as if caught up by her touch. She remembered this flame. She’d
seen it when she faced Belbalm. All worlds are open to us. If we are bold enough to enter.
She reached beneath her breastplate, felt the cold shell of the Arlington Rubber Boots box tucked against her ribs. All she wanted was to lie down and grieve for Hellie, for Babbit Rabbit. She was crouched over a stranger’s body as the rain fell outside. She was perched at the rail of a ship, the sea rising and falling beneath her. She was standing at the top of the stairs at Il Bastone, feeling the weight of stone in her hands, the terrible power of decision.
Alex gripped the box tighter. She hadn’t come this far to cry for past mistakes or tend to old wounds. She forced herself to meet their gazes— Turner, Tripp, Dawes.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go find Darlington.”
Again the world shifted and Alex braced to be thrown into someone else’s head, into some other awful memory, like the world’s worst playlist. She hadn’t been a passenger or an observer. She had been Dawes, Tripp, Turner, and Hellie. Her Hellie. Who should have been the one to survive. But this time it was just the world around Alex moving and she could suddenly see a path through the trees.
They emerged from the orchard into what looked like a sprawling outdoor mall that had been abandoned, or maybe never finished. The buildings were massive, some with arched windows, others square. Everything was spotlessly clean and a color somewhere between gray and beige.
Alex looked behind them and the orchard was there, the black trees rustling in a wind she couldn’t feel. Her ears were still full of the bees’ humming.
She heard someone singing and realized it was coming from a mirror set into a large elliptical basin of smooth gray rock. No—not a mirror, a pool of water so still and flat it looked like a mirror—and in it, she could see Mercy standing guard over their bodies—all of them lying on their backs in ankle-deep water in the library courtyard, floating like corpses.
“Is that really her?” Tripp asked. All his bravado was gone, wrung out of him by the descent. And they were only at the beginning.
“I think so,” said Alex. “Water is the element of translation. It’s the mediary between worlds.” She was quoting the Bridegroom, words he’d spoken to her as they stood up to their waists in a river, in the borderlands.
Mercy was singing to herself. “And if I die today I’ll be a happy phantom…”
Good choice. The whole song was death words. Alex could hear the metronome ticking steadily away behind Mercy’s tune.
“Where do we start?” asked Turner.
His expression was stony, as if in the wake of all that misery there was nothing to do but lock down. He had his answer now, about what Alex had done in Los Angeles. And she had her answers to questions she’d never thought to ask Turner. The Eagle Scout. The killer.
Alex squinted out at the flat gray day. Could it even be day if there was no sun visible? The bruised sky stretched on and on, and wherever they were … No pits of fire. No obsidian walls. It felt like a suburb, a new one, for a city that didn’t exist. The streets were spotless, the buildings nearly identical. They had the shape of the strip malls that lived on every corner of the valley, full of nail salons and dry cleaners and head shops. But there were no signs over the doors here and no customers. The storefronts were empty.
Alex turned in a slow circle, trying to stifle the wave of dizziness that overtook her. Everything was the same sandy, washed-out beige, not just the buildings but the grass and the sidewalks as well.
She felt an unpleasant shiver move over her. “I know where we are.” Dawes was nodding slowly. She’d put it together too.
They were standing in front of Sterling. Except Sterling was the orchard now, the basin full of water was the Women’s Table in their world. And that meant that all the rest …
“We’re in New Haven,” said Tripp. “We’re at Yale.”
Or something like it. Yale stripped of all its grandeur and beauty.
“Good,” she said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Then we at least know the layout. Let’s go.”
“Where exactly?” asked Turner. Alex met Dawes’s gaze.
“Where else?” she said. “Black Elm.”
 |
It should have taken them an hour on foot to reach Black Elm from campus. But time felt slippery here. There was no weather, no movement of the sun overhead.
They crossed through a concrete courtyard and then down to what she thought was Elm Street, but it was lined with big apartment buildings. When Alex looked behind, it was as if the street had shifted. There was an intersection where there hadn’t been one before, a right turn where there’d been a left.
“I don’t like this,” said Tripp. He was shaking. Alex remembered the slide of the wet rope, the sea heaving beneath her.
“We’re okay,” she said. “Let’s keep moving.”
“We should … leave bread crumbs or something.” He sounded almost angry, and Alex supposed he had good reason. This wasn’t an adventure. It was a nightmare. “In case we get lost.”
“Ariadne’s thread,” Dawes said, her voice unsteady.
The silence was too complete. The world too still. It felt like they were traveling through a corpse.
Alex kept her hand wrapped around the porcelain box. I’m coming to get you, Darlington. But she couldn’t stop thinking of Hellie. She could still feel Babbit Rabbit in her arms. He’d been alive. For a moment, they’d all been together again.
Alex didn’t know how long they’d been walking, but the next thing she knew they were standing outside of a chain-link fence. A huge sign read, Future Home of The Westville: Luxury Living. The render was of a sleek glass building towering over a landscaped slice of lawn, a Starbucks at the base, happy people waving to each other, someone walking her dog. But Alex knew this path, the lumps of stone that had once been columns, the birch trees now cut down to stumps.
“Black Elm,” Dawes whispered.
It seemed wise to keep their voices low. The houses along the street looked empty, their windows shuttered, their lawns gray and bare. But Alex
caught movement from the corner of her eye. A curtain pushed aside from an upstairs window? Or nothing at all.
“We’re being watched,” said Turner.
Alex tried to ignore the fear that moved through her. “We need bolt cutters if we’re going to get past that fence.”
“You sure?” Turner asked.
Alex looked down. The flame surrounding the Arlington Rubber Boots box was brighter, nearly white. She walked toward the fence, and then she was walking through it, the metal melting away to nothing.
“Cool,” said Tripp. But he sounded like he wanted to cry.
The driveway to Black Elm seemed longer, the road stretching like a gallows walk between the stumps of trees. But the house itself wasn’t visible.
“Oh no,” moaned Dawes.
Of course. The house wasn’t visible because it wasn’t a house anymore, just a forlorn pile of rubble. Alex caught a glimpse of something moving between the heaps of rock.
“I don’t like this,” Tripp said again. He had his arms crossed over his body as if to protect himself. Alex felt a softness toward him she hadn’t before. She could still taste the sharp tang of chlorine at the back of her throat, feel Spenser’s foot digging into her crotch and the weight of Tripp’s shame, forever pinning him beneath the water.
“Alex,” Turner said quietly. “Look back. Slowly.”
Alex glanced over her shoulder and had to fight to keep her walk steady.
They were being followed. A big black wolf was stalking them from about one hundred yards away. When she glanced back again, there were two, and she saw a third slinking through the trees to join them.
They didn’t look right. Their legs were too long, their spines humped, the long curve of their snouts too crowded with teeth. Their muzzles were wet with drool and crusted with something brown that might have been dirt or blood.
Alex and the others passed a big puddle that had formed in front of what had once been the front door, and in the murky water, Alex saw Mercy
pacing around the library courtyard. She’s okay. That has to count for something.
“There!” Dawes cried.
She was pointing at the ruins of Black Elm and there was Darlington— Darlington as she remembered him, as he’d been in her dream, handsome and human in his long, dark coat. No horns. No glowing tattoos. He had a rock in his hands, and as they watched, he lugged it over to what might have been the beginning or end of a wall, and laid it carefully atop the other stones.
“Darlington!” Dawes shouted.
He didn’t stop moving, didn’t alter his gaze. “Can he hear us?” Tripp asked.
“Daniel Arlington,” Turner boomed as if he was about to read Darlington his rights.
Darlington didn’t break his stride, but Alex could see his chest rising and falling as if he were fighting for air. “Please,” he gritted out. “Can’t … stop.”
Alex drew in a sharp breath. When Darlington spoke, she’d seen the whole scene waver—the ruin of Black Elm, the bruised sky, Darlington himself. She saw dark night and a well of yellow flame, heard people crying out and saw a great golden demon with curling horns towering over all of it. She heard it speak. Alagnoth grorroneth. Nothing but a growl but she could sense the words in it: None go free.
“How do we help him?” Dawes asked.
Alex stared at her. Dawes hadn’t seen it. None of them had. Tripp looked scared. Turner had one eye on the wolves. Neither of them had reacted to what Alex had seen when Darlington spoke. Had she imagined it?
“Keep an eye on the wolves,” she murmured to Turner and stepped into the rubble.
Darlington didn’t look up, but he spoke that word again: “Please.”
The world wavered, and she saw the demon, felt the heat from that well of flame. Darlington wanted to break free, just as he’d wanted to point them to the Gauntlet, but he didn’t have control.
She drew the Arlington Rubber Boots box from her pocket and opened the lid. Some part of her had hoped that would be enough, but still Darlington trudged back and forth, hefting rock after rock, placing them with infinite care. Was this object not precious enough? Had she gotten it wrong?
Alex gripped the lid and remembered all she’d seen in the old man’s memories. Darlington when he’d still just been Danny, alone in the cold shelter of Black Elm, trying to stay warm beneath coats he’d found in the attic, eating canned beans from the pantry. Danny, who had dreamed of other worlds, of magic made real and monsters to be bested. She remembered him with his cobbled-together recipe for the elixir, standing at the kitchen counter, ready to tempt death for a chance to see the world beyond.
“Danny,” she said, and it was not just her voice that emerged, but the old man’s as well, a gruff harmony. “Danny, come home.”
Darlington’s shoulders slumped. His head bowed. The rock slid from his hands. When he looked up, his eyes met hers, and in them she saw the anguish of ten thousand hours, of a year lost to suffering. She saw guilt in them too, and shame, and she understood: That golden demon was Darlington too. He was both prisoner and guard here in hell, tortured and torturer.
“I knew you’d come,” he said.
Darlington burst into blue flame. Alex gasped, heard Tripp shout and Dawes cry out. The flame licked over the rubble like a river flowing through the shattered ruin of Black Elm, and leapt into the box.
Alex slammed the lid down. The box rattled in her hands. She could feel him in there, feel the vibration in her palms. His soul. She was holding his soul in her hands, and the power of it coursed through her, too bright to contain. It had a sound, the ring of steel on steel.
“I’ve got you,” she whispered.
“Your armor!” Dawes cried. Alex looked down. She was back in her street clothes. So were the others.
“Why did it disappear?” Tripp asked. “What’s happening?”
Dawes shook her head as if she was trying to drive the fear out of it. “I don’t know.”
Alex tucked the box against her chest. “We have to get back to Sterling.
To the orchard.”
But when she turned to the road, nothing was where it should be. The driveway was gone, the stumps of trees, the fence, the houses beyond. She was looking at a long stretch of blacktop highway, a motel in the distance, a horizon of low foothills studded with Joshua trees. None of it made sense.
The wolves were still there and they were drawing closer. “There’s someone with Mercy,” said Tripp.
Alex whirled. Tripp was gazing into the puddle. She could see a man’s silhouette in the doorway of the library courtyard. He was arguing with Mercy.
“There’s something wrong with the ritual,” Dawes said, “with the Gauntlet. I don’t hear the metronome anymore.”
“Alex,” Turner said, his voice low.
“We have to—” She had meant to say something about Sterling, about completing the ritual. But she was staring into the yellow eyes of four wolves.
They were blocking the path between Black Elm and the highway. “What do they want?” Dawes quavered.
Turner squared his shoulders. “What do wolves ever want?” He drew his gun, then yelped. He held a bloody rabbit in his hand.
The wolves lunged.
Alex screamed as jaws closed around her forearm, the wolf’s teeth sinking deep. She heard the bone snap, felt bile rise in her throat. She fell backward, the creature on top of her. She could see its filthy muzzle, the blood and drool matted around its teeth, the crust of yellow pus around its wild golden eyes. But she still had hold of the box. The wolf shook her as the flames on her body caught on its oily coat. She could smell its fur burning. It growled low in its throat. It wasn’t letting go. She could see black spots in her vision. She couldn’t pass out. She had to get free. She had to get to Sterling. She had to get to Mercy.
“I’m not letting go either,” she snarled.
She turned her head to the side and saw the others wrestling with the rest of the pack, and the rabbit, white fur spotted with blood, nibbling at a beige blade of grass, bloody handprints on its sides, ignored by the wolves.
She gripped the box harder, but she could feel herself starting to fade out of consciousness. Could she outlast this monster? The wolf was on fire now, its flesh roasting. It was whimpering, but its jaws remained clamped on her broken arm. The pain was overwhelming.
What did it mean if they died in hell? Would their bodies rest easy above, unbattered and whole? What would happen to Mercy?
She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know who to save or how. She couldn’t even save herself. She’d promised Darlington she would get him out. She’d believed she could keep them all alive, that this was one more thing she could bluff and bare-knuckle her way through.
“I’m not letting go.” But her voice sounded distant. And she thought she heard someone, maybe something, laughing. It wanted her here. It wanted her broken. What would hell look like for her? She knew damn well. She’d wake up back in their old apartment, back with Len, as if none of this had ever happened, as if it had all been some wild dream. There would be no Yale, no Lethe, no Darlington, no Dawes. There would be no secret stories, no libraries full of books, no poetry. Alex would be alone all over again, staring into the deep black crater of her future.
Suddenly the wolf’s jaws released and Alex screamed louder as the blood rushed back to her arm. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. Darlington was fighting the wolves, and he was neither demon nor man but both. His horns blazed golden as he wrenched one of the beasts off Turner and hurled it into the rubble. It yelped and fell in a heap, its back broken.
The box. It was still in her hands, but it was empty now, that bright, victorious vibration gone. He’d slipped free. To save them.
He tore another monster off Dawes and his eyes met Alex’s as he snapped the wolf’s neck. “Go,” he said, voice deep and commanding. “I’ll keep them at bay.”
“I won’t leave you.”
He tossed the wolf that had been tormenting Tripp into the desert sand, and it ran, whimpering, tail between its legs. But there were more coming, shadows slinking between the crooked silhouettes of the Joshua trees.
“Go,” Darlington insisted.
But Alex couldn’t. Not when they were this close, not when she’d held his soul in her hands. “Please,” she begged. “Come with us. We can—”
Darlington’s smile was small. “You found me once, Stern. You’ll find me again. Now go.” He turned to face the wolves.
Alex made herself follow the others, but all the fight had gone out of her. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. She wasn’t supposed to fail again.
“Come on!” Turner demanded, dragging Tripp and Dawes down the desert highway.
There were more wolves waiting, blocking the road. “How do we get past them?” Tripp cried.
“This isn’t how this works,” Dawes said, her voice raw with fear. She had blood on her forearm and she was limping. “They shouldn’t be trying to stop us from leaving.”
Turner stepped forward, hands held up as if hoping the wolves would part like the Red Sea. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…”
One of the wolves cocked its head, like a dog that didn’t understand a command. Another whimpered, but it wasn’t a sound of distress. It sounded almost like a laugh. The largest of the wolves padded toward them, head lowered.
“For thou art with me,” Turner proclaimed. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies—”
The big wolf opened its mouth, its tongue lolled out. The word that emerged from its jaws was low and growling, but unmistakable: “Thief.”
Without thinking Alex took a step backward, terror rising like a scream in her head at the wrongness of it. Tripp’s mouth hung open, and Dawes groaned, panic overtaking them both. Only Turner stood fast, but she could see he was trembling as he shouted, “Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me—”
The wolf’s lips split, showing its jagged teeth, its black gums. It was smiling. “If a thief is found breaking in,” it said, the words rolling like growls, “and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no bloodguilt for him.”
Turner dropped his hands. He shook his head. “Exodus. That fucking wolf is quoting scripture at me.”
Now another wolf was creeping forward, head low. “All who came before me are thieves and robbers.” Alex caught movement from the left and right. They were being surrounded. “But the sheep did not listen to them.” The last word was little more than a snarl.
“It’s because we tried to take Darlington,” said Dawes. “We tried to take him home.”
“Back-to-back!” Alex cried. “Everyone with me!” She had no idea what she was doing, but she had to try something. Tripp was crying now and Dawes had squeezed her eyes shut. Turner was still shaking his head. She’d warned him this wasn’t some grand battle between good and evil.
Alex slapped her hands together, rubbing her palms against each other as if she were trying to keep warm, and sure enough the flames leapt. “Come on,” she muttered to them, to herself, still unsure of what she was asking for or who she was pleading with. The unwanted magic that had plagued her from her birth. Her grandmother’s spirit. Her mother’s crystals. Her absent father’s blood. “Come on.”
The big wolf lunged forward. Alex swept her hand out and the blue flame went with it, unfurling with a crack like a whip. The wolves leapt back.
Again she lashed out, letting the flame course through her, an extension of her arm, her fear and anger flooding through her and finding form in blue fire. Crack. Crack. Crack.
“What is this?” Turner demanded. “What are you doing?”
Alex wasn’t sure. The blazing arcs of flame weren’t dissipating. As Alex released them, they hung in the air, writhing, seeking direction, finally finding one another—and when they did they began to churn, forming a circle around her and the others, brilliant white and gleaming.
“What is it?” Tripp shouted.
Dawes met Alex’s eyes and now her fear was gone. Alex saw the determined face of the scholar shining back at her. “It’s the Wheel.”
The ground beneath their feet shook. The wolves were lunging at them, snapping at the blue and white sparks rising from Alex’s fire.
A crack opened beneath Alex’s feet and she stumbled. “Stop,” shouted Tripp. “You have to stop.”
“Don’t!” cried Dawes. “Something’s happening!”
And Alex didn’t think she could stop. The fire was sparking through her now, and she knew if she didn’t release it, it would burn her up from the inside. There would be nothing left but ash.
Alex looked back at Black Elm. The wolves had abandoned their attack on Darlington to launch themselves at the burning wheel. His horns had vanished, and he had a stone in his hand. She watched him carefully set it atop the wall.
I’ll come back for you, she vowed. I’ll find a way.
The earth beneath them split with a deafening boom. They fell, surrounded by a cascade of blue flame. Alex saw the wolves falling too. They blazed white as the fire caught hold of them, brilliant as comets, and then Alex saw nothing at all.
It is not just our right to make this journey, but our duty. If Hiram Bingham had never scaled the peaks of Peru, would we have his Crucible and our ability to see behind the Veil? The knowledge we have gained cannot remain academic. I could well point to the money and time spent, the generosity of Sterling, the labor and ingenuity of JGR, Lawrie, Bonawit, the many hands that toiled to construct a ritual of this size and complexity. They had the will to commit themselves to the project and the means to attempt it. It is now our duty to show the courage of their convictions, to prove we are men of Yale, rightful heirs to the men of action who built these institutions, instead of pampered children who balk at the thought of getting our hands dirty.
—Lethe Days Diary of Rudolph Kittscher (Jonathan Edwards
College ’33)
I am without energy or will to record what has happened. I know only despair. There is but one word I need write that may encompass our sins: hubris.
—Lethe Days Diary of Rudolph Kittscher (Jonathan
Edwards College ’33)
